“I agree,” said Miss de Vries at intervals. They’d agreed she would say nothing more. Modesty, moral rectitude, dignity—she radiated these virtues, unrelentingly, unendingly, maintaining perfect posture.
“But you can’t care for town in the summer,” Lord Ashley said to Lockwood, but his eyes were on Miss de Vries. “You can’t possibly intend to keep this house.”
There was a silence, a stretched-out moment. That was an opening gambit.
Miss de Vries put down her cup. “I…”
“And you know we don’t like the look of the books. You’re vastly overextended. Has your man told you my view?”
Miss de Vries saw Mr. Lockwood’s face go taut. It was the impertinence of it. That the house of de Vries was considered so vulgar, so lowborn, that it was perfectly reasonable to debase it. That you might eschew good manners, cross your legs and slurp your tea, and simply haggle without any hint of compunction.
“I don’t have a head for business,” said Miss de Vries, making her voice gentle, “but I know my father left his estate in perfect order.” A little white lie, an entirely fair one.
Lockwood said quickly, “We have a most extremely rigorous handle on the household’s affairs.”
Lord Ashley shook his head. “But you’re still in gold! You should get out of that, for a start. And the loans are a joke. They should be axed at once.”
Miss de Vries sipped her tea.
“By the way,” added Lord Ashley—and something twisted in his tone. “What’s all this talk about your old man’s funny business?”
Mr. Lockwood went still.
“Talk?” said Miss de Vries. She studied her fingers.
Mr. Lockwood cleared his throat. “People say all sorts of things.”
Lord Ashley was watching her. It was the first time he’d looked straight in her direction. “I’m not necessarily objecting,” he said with a testy laugh.
Miss de Vries pushed back her chair.
In this house there were all sorts of boxes. Drawers and vessels and canisters and cases beyond counting. They contained all manner of things. Some were left unlocked. Some were soldered with lead, encased in marble, locked up behind bars, buried in the ground. What Lord Ashley was discussing belonged to the category of untouchable, unknowable things. Miss de Vries knew the rules: she hadn’t made them; they had never been spoken aloud; they were things you intuited, just like breathing. You didn’t hesitate in these circumstances—you didn’t speak a word. You simply turned around and got out.
She rose.
“Lord Ashley,” she said, “I must bid you good evening.”
Later, Mr. Lockwood came up to see her.
“Well?” she asked. She disliked asking Mr. Lockwood his opinion on anything. It made him more self-congratulatory than he already was. But she had no other counselor to whom to turn.
Lockwood scratched his chin. “He’s a curious mixture of parts. A fearful snob, of course, but determined to cut his own path in the world. His grasp of economics is dismal, I mean really dismal. We’d have to be mindful of any undue interference. But he wasn’t rattled by any of the things that have troubled us before.”
Miss de Vries said coolly, “What troubled us before?”
Lockwood examined his notes. “Gracious, where to start? Wrangling over the jointure, election of trustees, talk of thirds and dowers. His sort have been negotiating marriage portions since Magna Carta. But Ashley’s brisk, and not worried by the detail.” Lockwood sniffed. “Perhaps he doesn’t understand it.”
“Mr. Lockwood,” said Miss de Vries, “you forget yourself. You are speaking to the future Lady Ashley.” It paid to keep Lockwood in his place.
Lockwood raised his eyebrows, not daunted. “The current Lady Ashley is worried by the detail. Her people will spin things out as long as they can afford to. Their pride will see to that, I can assure you. We’ll have several rounds of negotiation, assuming we’re minded to even accept an offer.”
Miss de Vries felt her heart skipping with impatience. “Then go and turn the screws on them. You said it yourself: he doesn’t care a jot for detail. If the Ashleys are so desperate for cash, then they can stump up and sign for it. Bring them to the ball. Let him see the rest of the world at my door. Someone else will put in an offer if they don’t.”
Lockwood sighed, his expression signaling his disapproval. “This ball.”
Miss de Vries regulated her voice. “You take care of your business, Mr. Lockwood. I’ll take care of mine.”
Afterward she went upstairs and inspected the invitation cards. She’d discarded several designs. This was the best one. She felt the thickness of the paper between her fingers, the delicate ridges, the gilt edging and black scrolls. Gold for grandeur, black for propriety.
“Fine,” she said, and the servants began stacking them up, shoving them into envelopes. Hundreds and hundreds of invitations.
She closed her eyes, pictured them vanishing into the postal system, wheeling out across the city at dawn. Hurtling up South Audley Street, along Piccadilly, across Cadogan Place. Skittering, leaping, glittering. Caught on silver platters, handled with cream gloves, sliced open with a sharp blade. A hundred eyes taking in the request—then two hundred, five hundred, a thousand eyes more: The House of de Vries requests the honor of your company…
It was time for her to be noticed.
Across town, Mrs. King and Winnie sat stuffing envelopes of their own. Short letters and telegrams, going out to the names supplied by Mrs. Bone. Agents in Paris, Hamburg, Naples, St. Petersburg, Philadelphia, all receiving notice of an imminent movement in the market for luxuries and rarities and impossibly splendid things…
“What name shall we use to sign them?” asked Winnie, taking a breather. The pages were teetering in piles, spilling all over the floor of Mrs. Bone’s house in Spitalfields. They worked in a room with bars on the windows, Mrs. Bone’s men standing guard in the passage.
Mrs. King’s concentration broke, and she accidentally gave herself a paper cut, a fine, long trail across the tip of her forefinger. She sucked it quickly, and left a stain on the letterhead. A pale, pinkish watermark. Signed in blood.
“You’re the cleverest,” she said. “What do you think?”
Winnie’s eyes brightened. “It should be something grand, something with meaning. What about the Fishwives of Paris? Or the Monstrous Regiment? Or the Army of Boudicca?”
“We’re not fishwives, we’re housekeepers.”
“We were housekeepers,” Winnie replied, hotly. “We’re not anymore.”
“You shouldn’t forget where you come from,” said Mrs. King thoughtfully. She took out her pen, signed the first letter with a flourish. “The Housekeepers will do nicely.”
At sunset they carried the sacks to the postbox, frog-marching the postman down the lane with one of Mrs. Bone’s stony-faced guards.
Winnie patted her sack as it was borne away from her hands. “Godspeed,” she murmured.
Mrs. King glanced at her. “You’re enjoying this.”
Winnie considered this seriously. “I am,” she said.